All cell phones typically use a display device to provide various types of useful information (e.g., phone numbers, caller IDs, signal strength, etc.) to the user of the cell phone. First-generation cell phones mostly used character-based displays. As the technology develops, most cell phones on the market of this invention use graphics-based displays, capable of displaying not only characters but also images including moving pictures.
Because of the small size of the portable devices preferred by most users of such devices, displays in these devices are necessarily very small. On the other hand, in the case of the third-generation (and next-generation) cellular systems, services available on such systems will evolve toward data-centric services including exchange of emails, stationary and moving pictures, as well as voice communications, providing true multimedia services.
Most of the current displays are very small for such multimedia applications. For example, one of the next generation multimedia services will be the broadcast TV service available on a cell phone. The current displays are, in general, too small for such services because people usually prefer to enjoy TV pictures on a bigger display.
A quick remedy of this problem of a too-small display of a cell phone for multimedia applications would be to simply use a bigger display. In this way, though, the size of the display could increase only up to the size of the phone.